Funny how color perception works. The Sun looks quite red in both my LS80 and my LS100. The DSII for the LS80 is very much worth purchasing so long as you don't mind a little "enhanced sky glow" in the background.

Someone my club bought an SMII 90DS and while it is a fine scope, there are a few things that bug me about it.
- I hate the helical focuser. It's stiff and difficult to get a precise focus with.

- The extension tubes are sloppy.

-Terrible "sweet-spotting". Unless proms are almost directly in the center of the FOV, they're either very dim or gone completely, and this is through the BF15.

I just received an LS80 single stack, but haven't had a chance to use it, yet. I'm curious to see the comparison.

I'll be curious to hear your comparison. My pre-SMII SM90 is a very satisfactory instrument: Yes, a sweet spot, but not as bad as you describe by far, and the image is certainly not dim. (Mine is not DS, tho', so I guess that's the difference). The helical focuser is not so bad. My biggest objection to the scope itself is its humungus size and weight (beautiful to look at, however). The Lunt appeals to me because of the smaller size and because people seem so much happier with the way Lunt treats customers.

I guess is all depends on your description of "orange" or "red". I call orange, well the color of an orange and red the color of a fire truck (except for those freaky lime green ones). I put the color at the eyepiece of both scopes somewhere in the middle of those two, but again, not a discernible difference between the two.

I agree with you about the weight of the SMII. It is pretty to look at, but man is it a beast compared to the LS80.

I can't say much about Lunt's CS as I haven't had to deal with it. I did send them a request asking what the lead time on the LS80 was and never received a response. I just happened to get lucky an caught when OPT had one in stock.

I'll give the guy at OPT a tip 'o the hat. Since I ordered on the web, he saw that I had placed mt order before a local had called wanting to buy it. He called me so that we could complete the sale before it got jerked out from under me.

Guess I should also apologize to whomever in California wanted to buy the scope and didn't get it. Sorry.

I think focuser debates are interesting. Some people really get passionate about them. Others don't really seem to notice or care about the focuser (as long as it works a little bit). I confess to being in the latter group. Why someone would pay an extra few hundred bucks for a focuser change is beyond me.

But, if you're a focuser guy, you need to learn that you are and scratch the itch. Basically, know what is important to you and what isn't. Spend accordingly.

On focusers, it depends a lot on what you are putting in them. If a single Plossl eyepiece, then save your money. If a heavy binoviewer with two heavy eyepieces pointed to a sun high in the sky, then you probably want something that works relatively smoothly and then holds still.

That doesn't mean that any of the stock focusers is not good enough. But a heavy payload is where you would think about it.

I have to admit that I love LOVE the Feather Touch on my TMB130, but couldn't justify the expense on the solar scope. I'll be doing mostly photography with a 38 gram camera, so the stock crayford should be fine. It took some adjustment so that it would support itself, but it's just find now. It's not the best crayford I've used, but it's not the worst, either.

I recently picked up a Coronado SolarMax II 60mm and find it great. Do I regret it? Not at all, it will hold me over until I get a 80 or 90mm Ha for the next cycle. Do I wish I bought a Lunt? Not really, because I needed to put funds towards a monochrome camera, if I had the wiggle room in my budge I would have sprung for the Lunt PT 60bf12. Even on Stephens website for reviews, there is pretty much a toss up between the Lunt and the SolarMax if your talking the standard tilt-tuner.

The Helical focuser isn't bad at all, takes a bit to get use to, works fine in practice.